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Mini-ITX Clustering
NormalVisual writes "Add this cluster to the list of fun stuff you can do with those tiny little Mini-ITX motherboards. I especially like the bit about the peak 200W power dissipation. Look Ma, no fans!! You may now begin with the obligatory Beowulf comments...."
Hmm... yeah I read it...
Yadda yadda yadda, big numbers, yadda yadda yadda, floatin-point rocks!, yadda yadda yadda, NASA, yadda yadda yadda, neutron star.
Translation: Tax dollars being pissed away on the 50th largest supercomputer and a bunch of theoretical math.
Nice work if you can get it. Some of us have had a few rough years of just trying to get by out here in that "real world" that gives you all that entropy. Sorry if we're bothering you.
Good lord, who are you people and why is 40% of my paycheck being ripped out of my pocket in order to pay your salaries again, please? (Yes I know that NASA's budget is a drop in the bucket in the overall Federal budget, but as you said, it doesn't make Mars any closer to know that Alpha Centauri is so far away! Money wasted is money lost, and if time = money the converse must be true. Great minds wasting time is more of a tradegy than me doing it, for certain.)
Could someone explain in layman's terms the real scientific gains that studying neutron stars at great expense to taxpayers brings that will affect "life on planet Earth" significantly -- in my lifetime or the next two to three generations?
Feel free to throw in any information you might have about why we all pay for Shuttle to be re-flown and ISS to produce virtually zero real science. (The real-world answer to that is probably "Public Relations", I know. And lotteries are taxes for people who are bad at math too.)
Nevermind, that's a topic change. Forget it. In all seriousness, your posts were an interesting read, but I find theoretical studies of things like this a giant waste of resources and so-called brainpower.
The dude at MIT who just created the liquid lens thing -- now that's an engineer I'd like to meet. His creation will directly affect people's quality of living.
Somehow I doubt your 50th largest supercomputer cluster will ever create enough value returned to society to pay for the electricity it uses, let alone the costs of building it, maintaining it, or coding for it. What a waste.
Feel free to educate me -- I'd love to know what I'm truly paying for other than someone who has enough math skills to argue about floating-point calculations on useless data that doesn't lead to any more useful information than to prop up a self-perpetuating PhD paper mill.
Bring it on -- tell me how your supercomputer I paid for is changing my life for the better. Bottom line.
+++OK ATH